I'm gonna share my thoughts here but first I should mention that I'm new here, I know nothing about nothing when it comes to either jet boats or owning a website but I too love the videos as they are what really pushed me over the edge on taking the plunge on a jet boat.
I think your videos are awesome. Most of us don't go to the river as much as we'd like but your videos do a good job of recreating the good feelings we get while we're there. As far as content on a website, videos are arguably the best. Better than pictures, articles, even the forum, although those things are all still important. Videos are pure indulgence as opposed to laboring through a long article with a handful of pictures sprinkled in.
I'm not exactly sure how income in generated through websites but I'd wager that the bulk of it comes from advertising. I'm assuming now but it seems that the higher the traffic draw to your site, the higher you charge for advertising. My fear is that charging for videos could cause multiple side effects. Likely only your very dedicated followers would purchase the DVD but you would be taking away amazing free content from the site and possibly reduce traffic. I have to preface this next statement with "I listen to a lot of KFI", but I heard that the porn industry is having trouble making money like they once did because there is so much free porn available so people are not paying their membership fees. I'd be afraid that people would either find it for free or just go elsewhere.
I'm not sure how many of you guys are fisherman but I'm sure some of you are familiar with Bloody Decks. I think those guys have done a great job building a business around a website that does essentially what yours does. It provides "fishing, boating, fill in the blank" enthusiast with a place to discuss their hobby and gives them content that gets them excited about their hobby in order to generate traffic and sell ads. If you go to their site you'll see the main page that has regularly updated free content, a great forum and tons of ads. A lot of their content is actually generated by their users which they just link to on the main page and the possibility of getting on the main page gives the posters added motivation to produce awesome content (which is usually just trip reports with tons of pictures).
Again I'm just a knucklehead electrician but I think you've provided all of us with a great service that helps us all get through life when it get monotonous and I hope to see you rewarded financially. I can't imagine how many hours you put into just the video editing, let alone having the discipline to get footage on every trip. But it seems that the direct monetary gains from selling DVD's could be significantly less than the indirect gains of putting up free videos, which generates more traffic and allows you to sell more ads and makes you a shit load of money so you don't have to work any more and you can pay someone to video you winning a bunch of races which gives you more content, more traffic, more money, badder ass boat.....
I'm probably talking out my ass and like I said, I have no idea about the struggles that you've gone through to build an awesome site but I'd be happy to support either way. You're the genius behind SCJB and I'm sure you'll be successful either way.
